


Echos

by d0nquix0te



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 09:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d0nquix0te/pseuds/d0nquix0te
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave and Rose start to remember. John and Jade are already gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echos

It’s cold in Washington, in the middle of January. It feels like you’re inside of a huge bubble, or maybe you’re submerged under water, because the outside world sounds distant and hollow even though you know it’s there and about half an hour ago, you were in the midst of it all. Reality has split into two, and behind is the world you’re used to while a different one is here in front of a modest gravestone that’s only there for show because the person whose name is carved in the front of it was never actually buried.

You and Lalonde have been standing in the graveyard for exactly twenty-four and a half minutes. You’ve always had a really good sense of time, yet it wouldn’t surprise you if hours had somehow passed already while the two of you just stood there in silence. After all that time, you’re still not sure what emotion you’re feeling or what you should do now.   
It started a couple months previously when you came home at the end of the day, walking past your little brother while he chatted with friends online. 

“Whatcha doing, kid?” you’d asked even though you knew the answer. It was just like any other day. 

“Talking to Jake,” he said without looking away from the screen.

“The one with the shitty taste in movies, right?”

“So incredibly shitty and in a completely sincere, unironic way.”

You’d left him alone after that, but something nagged at you as you poked around the kitchen for something edible for dinner. You’re pretty sure the kid doesn’t eat unless you put something in front of him – he’s always been too busy with his online friends and his robots and epic long showers. You ended up ordering pizza anyway and when you brought him a plate, you sneaked a look over his shoulder.

Bright blue font filled the screen in contrast to Dirk’s orange. You saw one of the messages, just a little emoticon face, with a B that looked like buckteeth. “How’s John?” you’d asked, wondering if you were crossing the line between a guardian who’s healthily interested in their kid’s life and just being plain nosy. 

Dirk looked up at you slowly, face completely passive behind his pointed sunglasses. “Jane,” he corrected you. 

“Yeah…” you replied, not understanding his response until you realized what you’d said. John. Where the Hell did that come from? “Right, Jane.”

“She’s fine,” he said and that was the end of the conversation but the beginning of something huge. It was only a week or so after that when Lalonde contacted you through pesterchum, which was something ridiculous in itself. You only use the program because it’s so hilariously out of date. You’d grinned when her unique chumhandle popped up, simultaneously thinking she might be someone you’d enjoy getting to know and remembering that you already knew her.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] \--

TT: Good day, Mr. Strider.   
TT: There’s a matter of importance I’d like to discuss with you.  
TG: is this the part where you tell me to lie back on the couch and close my eyes as we divulge into the depths of my psyche to discover my latent attraction to slimy tendrils of inhuman nature  
TT: Yes, this is exactly how I imagined this conversation would go.  
TT: My name is Rose Lalonde.  
TT: Does that mean anything to you?  
TG: this sounds like a really shitty pick up line  
TG: im not on the market for a fuckbuddy  
TT: Dave, will you please just answer the question?  
TG: what are you expecting?  
TG: oh jesus wait  
TG: youre not one of my exes are you  
TT: No. Definitely not.   
TT: Try alternate universe sister.  


By that point, you’d been pretty sure you knew exactly who she was but admitting it wasn’t easy. You remembered being young and getting pestered by this girl to play a game with her. You remembered being her server player and you remembered hanging out with her in a dark, purple version of your bedroom. The pieces of the puzzle weren’t completely in place, but it was enough to make you realize this was serious. 

TG: you knocked me out with a fucking ball of yarn  
TT: …Yes. Yes, I did.   
TT: I gather you’re remembering now.  
TG: i guess so   
TG: this is twisted  
TT: I won’t pretend to understand what this means but we’re experiencing the same phenomenon.   
TT: Do you remember anything that can explain this?  
TG: no just you and jade  
TG: ive been remembering john for months i think just didn’t realize till a week ago  
TT: I haven’t been able to find them yet.   
TT: My daughter has been working fervently on a stuffed bunny dressed as a wizard.  
TT: When I saw it, I remembered knitting patches into a bunny just like it and sending it to John.  
TT: Does that sound familiar?  
TG: no that sounds crazy  
TG: not that any of this is not crazy  
TG: look ive gotta go  
TG: im kind of busy  


It had become a little too much all at once, so you absconded and didn’t talk to Rose for another couple of weeks, but the ball was rolling and the memories were coming back, making you suddenly feel like you’d lived two lifetimes, or maybe more, except some of those timelines weren’t _you_ you, but offshoot versions of you who ended up dying when the timelines didn’t come full circle, and you have to admit, you’ve done some crazy things and had some insane ideas, but these memories blew everything else out of the water. You thought you were going mad. 

Rose reaches for your hand and you let her take it. It’s been twenty-nine minutes now and your hands are cold. Coming from Texas, you hadn’t thought ahead to bring gloves or anything other than a jacket, meanwhile Rose is decked out in light purple winter clothes, and you remember that purple was always her colour. 

“Do you want to go?” she asks. 

“I don’t know,” you reply. 

“We can come back.”

“Sure we can, but it’s not going to change anything.”

She sighs, not because you’re being difficult but because she understands. You never knew John Egbert, but he was your best friend. You’ve never heard of Jade Harley but you remember how infectious her smile was. Even the emoticons were a little infectious, making you grin through your poker face.

You’d been watching some shitty romance movie on TV when you started remembering Jade. The male main character had gotten really hurt, and the female main character lifted his head onto her lap. Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose as she looked down at him, lip quivering and tears in her eyes. You really should have found something better to watch, because it was horribly cliché and the acting sucked, but something made you keep watching. 

Then the girl leaned down to kiss the boy, and his eyes fluttered back open. You don’t remember if he died or recovered or if there was a happy ending because from that point on, you’d sat on the couch staring into space as you recalled the faint feeling of Jade’s lips on yours before you fully woke up on Derse. She brought you back to life. 

Now you have a copy of her death certificate. Lalonde gave you John’s too, but the certificate is all you’ll get for Jade, because she wasn’t buried in a graveyard either and there isn’t even a symbolic marker for her like John’s. 

“Do you think they remembered?” Rose asks. 

You shrug. “It doesn’t matter, we were too young at the time.”

Rose ignores your pessimism. “I like to think they did. I think they remembered the game and I bet they left some sort of knowledge behind for Jane and Jake.”

The names are familiar, because Dirk has mentioned them on very rare occasions, but now that you remember John and Jade too, the names get all jumbled up in your head and it feels wrong. You want John and Jade to still be alive. 

“Changed my mind,” you say, “Let’s go.” You think bitterly that this would all be easier if you could forget that you remembered your alternate dimension best friends. 

The two of you keep holding hands as you walk back to the path and out through the front gate of the graveyard. You envision a time when you stood side by side past the furthest ring, waiting for a bomb to go off. That’s when everything reset, you remember, that’s when you became this version of yourself and you forgot your best friends. 

“I miss them,” you say before you can stop yourself. 

“I know,” Rose answers, “Me too.”


End file.
